tenfootpole.org

By Gareth Hanrahan
Pelgrane Press
13th Age
Levels 4-8

Can you kill the dungeon before it kills you? In 13th Age, living dungeons slither up through the underworld and invade the surface lands. The Stone Thief is the most ancient and cunning of its kind; a vast monster that preys on the cities and structures you love, swallows them, and remakes them into more deathtrap-filled levels inside itself. Now, it’s hunting YOU.

It’s GenCon next week (which will have passed by the time you read this), so I borrowed this from a friend to kill time until I burn through my wallet in the dealer hall. Stone Thief does something that I don’t believe any module has tried to do: build a campaign around a megadungeon. Sure, most megadungeons recommend you do that but Stone Thief provides the tools to help you do that. This is more than the city in ASE1, or the wilderness/bandits in Rappan. This is all of the surrounding goals and motivations. Mini-quests. Things that could happen. Major hook and plot line suggestions. Less detail, like the wilderness sections of Rappan, but more Larger Context. It’s like Hanrahan read all the advice possible about building a megadungeon and implemented 90% of it correctly … within the confines of the 13th Age system.

For those not in the know, 13th Age is what modern D&D has tried to be … and failed at. 3.5, Pathfinder, 4, and now 5 (or, at least RPGA 5e.) It’s the ultimate evolution of the set-piece combat and linear plot and balanced parties and so forth. And it’s not bad. If you want that kind of thing then 13th Age does it much better than any other modern version of D&D. Wha 13th Age does better than those other version is provide some grounding. Rather than pretend Anything Is Possible it instead provides an opportunity for the players to ground their characters with motivations and relationships to some “Icons”, things like the rules of known world, the lich king, the elf queen, or the orc lord. This grounding helps everything get in to things much faster, IMO. Needless to say, you’re gonna have to re-stat this thing for a non-13th Age game. That shouldn’t be hard for anyone who’s not a stickler.

This dungeon, like all in 13th Age, is alive and travels underground until it pops up and eats a town. This is the pretext used to both the plot and to justify the various heavily themed areas of the levels found in the dungeon. And I use the word “plot” loosely here. The back third of the adventure describes how to integrate the dungeon in to your game. It’s got a lot of suggestions, a lot of variations, and some major themes. It definitely has an idea of how things should go, but I would argue that the “plot” here is lighter, much lighter, than about 90% of the adventures I review. It comes across os tools and ideas.

I’m going to say some things that I generally refer to negatively, as I describe the actual dungeon: linear and set-pieces. Not only linear, but the DM is encouraged to throw in some little minor encounters along the way (which are outlined at the beginning of each level, in about ¾ of a page. Nice touch to spice things up.) and also to rearrange the rooms and levels as the players explore the dungeon and re-enter on other quests/adventures. Remember, the dungeon is alive and a thinking being so it can do this … or at least that’s the pretext. The encounters tend to be set-pieces. Good set pieces, generally. I’ll remind you that I’m a hypocrite and also liked many of the newer DCC adventures that are, essentially, linear and full of set pieces. The encounters here are interesting and not throw-aways. They remind me a lot of the encounters from Tower of Gygax or the DCC funnels at cons … with a far lower mortality rate. 🙂 It’s going to be hard for someone to argue that the room encounters here vary significantly from the types found in Maze of the Blue Medusa. Certainly less talking than Medusa, and certainly fewer “choices” than Medusa, but the varied rooms do have a “free form” nature to them, even if they really are just mostly combat. Combat in pipe rooms with goblins dragging bodies in to them. A giant octopus with swords in its tentacles. The thing is packed with stuff. Let’s say something like seventy or eighty different encounters in the dungeon, almost all of which can be ripped off.

13th Age does a good job with mysteries. Both the core book and this adventure have a kind of open ended writing style that alludes to things but doesn’t come right out and explain in, in all cases. This makes the DM think. Or, rather, it encourages them to think. It gets their mind going. You start to think of explanations and possibilities as your mind races to fill in the details. Which is exactly what should be happening when you prep something for running it. It does some other similar things. There’s a very clear entrance to the Mythic Underworld present, you KNOW you are going SOME. PLACE. ELSE. It also has some great advice for changing the dungeon when the party returns to the same areas, and other advice for dealing with certain situations, and a great index/glossary that helps summarize things in the dungeon. You know how much I like reference data!

This isn’t a perfect product by any definition. The faction play elements or the dungeon are talked up however they are not really present in any meaningful way. Sure, there’s different groups in the dungeon, and you can talk to a couple of them, but the interconnected nature is not really present. So it’s faction play at its most abstract in that one or two groups, out of a dozen or more, are not immediately hostile. It also uses the old “it kills something/someone you love” as a hook. The DM is encouraged to make the players want to take revenge on the dungeon. From an old school standpoint this is an overused crapfest of a trope that is almost ALWAYS used incorrectly … and thus puts me on edge every time I see it. In 13th Age … well, it has an element of story gaming to it as you create your character, so revenge and character arcs, set up in advance, are not exactly out of the question.

These are nits. The worst problem is, I think, the lack of focus in the room descriptions with the Hard To Run consequences that results in. The descriptions, proper, are not bad. The actual text used to describe things is evocative and interesting. It makes you want to push the big red button. It’s also surrounded by a more conversations style of prose that makes it harder than it should be to pick out the important bits. Asides, with no meaning. The first line of room 3 is “The [dungeon] greets intruders with this seemingly unremarkable chamber. Six huge black pillars support the ceiling, where the faded and peeling remains of a once beautiful mural can be seen.” That second sentence is good, and could almost be decent read-aloud. The first sentence though, is useless conversational garbage. It’s completely not needed and clogs up attempts to pull out the data that IS important. This happens time and time again in the adventure. You end up needing a highlighter to draw attention to what you need to run the room. The elements are present. The initial description helps focus attention to the ceiling and the pillars, and both get a little break out to describe them more if the players have their characters investigate … exactly the way Describe & Inquire adventuring is supposed to go. Except … it’s a mishmash. The rest of the first paragraph, after the part quoted above, described the mural. Then the second paragraph describes the giant gargoyle statue in the room that holds a silver key. And then, later on, in the fourth paragraph, comes a description of the pillars. The basic room concept is a good one, but you end up fighting the text to pull out what you need rather than the text moving logically from one part to the next. The gargoyle is decent. The pillar stuff is excellent (they are actually hollow specimen cases with black swirling vapor inside … Wraiths!)

If you’re looking for a classic exploration dungeon then this isn’t for you. If you‘re ok with set pieces then it is. If you want to see something deal with a megadungeon in the larger campaign context then this is for you. It’s loads more interesting than Worlds Largest Dungeon, or Temple of Elemental Evil. I’m going to find a copy for myself, it’s interesting enough to warrant that. For 13th Age fans this should be a no brainer. For OSR fans you’ll have to deal with your own feelings about linear set pieces.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148623/13th-Age-Eyes-of-the-Stone-Thief?1892600

By Rich Maffei
Expeditious Retreat Press
OSRIC
Levels 4-7

For a second year in a row, Drecallis has not appeared on the appointed day to collect her tribute from the people of Longridge. Is the terrible beast dead? Or has the great reptile departed for greener pastures? The elders are desperate to discover the truth, and if the dragon is indeed dead, a priceless hoard may be sitting in the dragon’s lair, unguarded. A call has been put out for brave souls willing to seek out the remote lair of Drecallis and investigate!

This is a thirty-ish room cave complex with a good variety of creatures crawling about. It has a vanilla slant to it, although a decent variety of vanilla with several touches of classic D&D. The text is long on words and short on interesting.

You might think of the complex map as a kind of star shape. Each of the legs has an entrance in it, with a common convergence areas/no-man’s land in the middle. Trogs in one arm, gnolls in another, vermin-ish stuff is another, and a behir in the last leg (the old dragon lair proper.) There’s conflict here between the three main groups, but not full on faction play. Everyone is hostile in spite of their problems, with on the behir willing to talk, at a low probability and only under certain circumstances. This is an opportunity lost for faction play, although the generally linear nature of the “legs” of the map make interesting faction play/exploration hard to pull off on a map like this.

It’s hard for me to find the words to describe the dungeon. I want to say “boring”, but I think instead the writing is quite flat. A spider in a hole, trogs torturing a gnoll, a crayfish attack … there’s a lof of classic and, in an academic sense, interesting potential to the encounters. But the writing style here just puts you to sleep. It takes a lot of text to get where it’s going. It’s almost as if the entire thing is written in an “aside” kind of style, but more of an academic footnote than a nudge nudge wink wink kind of aside. There are these descriptions about the hows and why of things, the motivations and in places irrelevant detail. None of it really adds to the encounter the DM will be running. “A box of assorted tubers.” Oh. Ok. Thanks. “Two tuns filled with rainwater.”

Everything here is a bit … crufty. The magic items and the other mundane treasures just don’t get much here. A +2 ring. +1 swords. The variety turns up a bit when you get to the hidden treasure of the dead dragon. Paragraphs on a lamia deception. Paragraphs on a doppleganger deception. But very little in the way of making it INTERESTING.

And that’s a shame. The variety here is well done. Very little in this adventure feels forced at all. Everything fits together without pushing it at all. There’s a lot of decent little set ups, like the skeleton in the water, or the spider in the hole. Or, even, the POTENTIAL for faction play. Dead NPC parties, and a banshee bitter from her abandonment. Harpies in their filth ridden lair. It should be great. Instead it’s flat.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/125858/Advanced-Adventures-31-The-Lost-Lair-of-Drecallis?1892600

By Richard LeBlanc Jr.
New Big Dragon Games Unlimited
Labyrinth Lord
Level 1-3

In a jungle village a complains that her baby has been taken. A lot of the villagers think she abandoned it in the jungle or a tiger got it. Individually they come to the party to relate rumors of an evil temple in the jungle. Inside is a dungeon with some psionic properties, if you are so inclined to use them.

This adventure is in a fifty-two room dungeon with a largely ring layout, symmetrical. It has a weird vibe to it. It has a lot of the elements that I would expect to find in an old school dungeon, but it is … plain? Boring? The writing here just doesn’t grip one very strongly. I’m also VERY suspicious of the ring hallway layout. Combined with a few other elements, I just can’t get into this.

The biggest problem with this adventure is probably the writing. I’ll cite a couple of specific examples of it being non-specific, but there’s something else going on and I’m not sure how to describe it. The writing is … technical? It’s very straightforward. It’s pretty clear. And it’s generally boring. I can cite a couple of examples of abstracted descriptions, like a bow that is described as “amazing craftsmanship” or a dagger that is described as “particularly well taken care of.” These descriptions are abstracted. They are conclusions. Rather than describe the dagger, or bow, and letting the player draw a conclusion that they are well taken care of (and therefore special) or of great craftsmanship, instead the read-aloud makes that conclusion for the party. This kind of genericism is the opposite of ecovative writing that inspires the DM and/or players. There’s something else going on with the writing though and I’m having trouble really putting words to what the issue is. The descriptions are boring because the writing style is just not exciting. Is that the right way to say this? Not dynamic? Not inspiring? I don’t know. It’s technical, and the elements are all there, and it doesn’t necessarily fall in to the trap of describing the mundane, but it doesn’t really make me excited to run the rooms either.

Here’s an example. It’s a little heavy on the number specificity (which I don’t think is appropriate in read-alaoud in particular) but that’s not really the problem: “48 straw mats are arranged in a 6×8 pattern in this 30’×40′ room. The walls are painted golden yellow, save for a large white symbol painted in the center of the west wall showing the symbol for the third/plexus chakra.
In each corner of the room, set on the floor, is an ornately-carved ebony incense holder featuring a seated figure. The room is permeated by the scent of lemon and myrh.” It’s an ok description. But not a great description.

Some of you may recall the chess-players room in the Dwimmermount draft. The room had two ghostly players playing chess. They ignored the party and you could not interact with them in any way. There are some of the same sorts of rooms in this adventure, rooms in which there is trivia rather than something to interact with. I’m not going to assert that every room has to be to fun and exciting, or that dungeons have no room for mysteries or empty rooms. This is something else. It’s presenting something that COULD be interesting but without any elements for the players to interact with or use the room. One of the early rooms in the dungeon has steam in it, that comes in through cracks, doesn’t go into the hallways, and dissipates, with the effect having a random chance each time the party enters. That’s it. This isn’t hinting at a volcano or steam later on. It’s not a terrain effect for a challenge. It just is. This is only one example. Murals and funerary are steam rooms are fine, but they need to contribute to the adventure … and these do not.

I am QUITE suspicious of the map as well. It’s symmetrical, and I’m not a fan of those, but the bigger issue is the ring nature of it. Imagine a long hallway that forms a circle, and bisecting the circular line are rooms. You must go into the rooms to walk the hallway. That is, essentially, the dungeon and it is, essentially, a linear layout, with all the faults and lack of options that come with that sort of design. There’s also a large number of monsters, humans mostly, that come out of suspended animation to attack the party, another element that I’m predisposed to enjoy. It just seems lazy. Combined with several other rooms where the read aloud has the monster immediately attacking, it’ just doesn’t seem interesting.

There are more than a few unique magic items, and some of the items descriptions ARE decent, like a +1 dagger with an ivory handle in the shape of a serpentine dragon with red fringed silk tassels. That’s something worth keeping, if you’re a player. It’s also got a classic set up or two like a giant spider guarding a gem. Those are all great examples of doing things well.

I just can’t get into this one.

It’s $5 at rpgnow.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/166283/PA1-Vault-of-the-Faceless-Giants?1892600